Play Runescape IRL

December 2, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 5 Comments

Runescape is pushing nearly 21 years old, and while that’s quite a long time for a game to stay active with an engaged userbase, it’s also a long time for people to modify the game in all kinds of colorful ways. For some older games like Team Fortress 2 this means spinning up a bot to ruin servers, but for Runescape the hacks are a little more lighthearted and fun. Like this axe which allows [BigFancyBen] to play Runescape in real life.

This is more of an augmented reality hack which upgrades his normal human interface device from a simple keyboard and mouse to also include this axe. When the axe is manipulated in real life, the in-game axe can be used at the same time. There are a lot of layers to this one but essentially a Switch joycon is connected to the axe to sense motion, which relays the information on axe swings to an API via a Python script. A bot in the game then chops the virtual tree, which is reported back to the API which then reports it back to [BigFancyBen]’s viewscreen which is additionally streamed on Twitch.

While this started off as frustration with the game’s insistence on grinding in order to reach certain objectives, it seems that there are some fun ways of manipulating that game mechanic for the greater good. [BigFancyBen] originally said he would rather go to the gym than “click anymore rooftops” this is quite the start on the full IRLScape world. Don’t forget that it’s equally possible to take this type of build in the opposite direction and control real-world things from inside a video game.

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LEDs display different pitches in a sunburst pattern

Spiral Music Visualization

November 26, 2021 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

Displaying notes live as they are being played can be a really powerful learning tool, but it’s usually used to learn how to play a specific instrument. This take on the topic is actually a neat way to learn more about music theory — how pitches work together to build the sounds that we hear. The visual tack chosen arranges each of 12 notes into a spiral. As you continue to go up the scale through more octaves, pitches that share the same name line up into a line like a ray projecting out from the sun. So there are 12 rays for the notes in the scale: C, C#/D♭, D, D#/E♭,F, etc.

[mechatronicsguy] built it a few years back but just now got around to documenting it, and we’re sure glad he did. The layout of notes at first looks just like a colorful visualization. But as he mentions in his description, this assigns a shape to each different type of cord. A major cord will have the same shape whether it is played with C, G#, B♭, or any other note as the root. The shape simply rotates around the axis based on that root note. Higher octaves will be shown further out on the radius, but the chord shape will still be the same. Minor, augmented, even modal chords and those with added pitches all have their own unique shape on the display.

You get the best understanding of the visualization by looking at the Python-rendered version in the video below. It’s a nice touch that notes turn grey and fade away after being released so you kind of see where the current chord came from. This isn’t strictly a perk of pre-recordings. While you can feed it MIDI files, you can also play a MIDI instrument and display the visuals live on the hardware version that uses a Teensy with an audio shield.

If you’re looking for examples on how music visualizers are used to teach the instrument, look no further than this Wurlitzer note visualizer replica. Also for those who don’t know, the song being played in the hardware demo (second video below) is Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. Well worth a full listen, it’ll change your life.

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Visualizing WiFi With A Converted 3D Printer

November 22, 2021 by Dan Maloney 9 Comments

We all know we live in a soup of electromagnetic radiation, everything from AM radio broadcasts to cosmic rays. Some of it is useful, some is a nuisance, but all of it is invisible. We know it’s there, but we have no idea what the fields look like. Unless you put something like this 3D WiFi field strength visualizer to work, of course.

Granted, based as it is on the gantry of an old 3D printer, [Neumi]’s WiFi scanner has a somewhat limited work envelope. A NodeMCU ESP32 module rides where the printer’s extruder normally resides, and scans through a series of points one centimeter apart. A received signal strength indicator (RSSI) reading is taken from the NodeMCU’s WiFi at each point, and the position and RSSI data for each point are saved to a CSV file. A couple of Python programs then digest the raw data to produce both 2D and 3D scans. The 3D scans are the most revealing — you can actually see a 12.5-cm spacing of signal strength, which corresponds to the wavelength of 2.4-GHz WiFi. The video below shows the data capture process and some of the visualizations.

While it’s still pretty cool at this scale, we’d love to see this scaled up. [Neumi] has already done a large-scale 3D visualization project, using ultrasound rather than radio waves, so he’s had some experience in this area. But perhaps a cable bot or something similar would work for a room-sized experiment. A nice touch would be using an SDR dongle to collect signal strength data, too — it would allow you to look at different parts of the spectrum.

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Python Ditches The GILs And Comes Ashore

November 3, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 38 Comments

The Python world has been fractured a few times before. The infamous transition from version 2 to version 3 still affects people today, and there could be a new schism in the future. [Sam Gross] proposed a solution to drop the Global ~~Interrupt~~ Interpreter Lock (GIL), which would have enormous implications for many projects that leverage the CPython internals, such as Pandas and NumPy.

The fact that Python is interpreted is a double edge sword. It means there can be different runtimes, such as Pyston, Cinder, MicroPython, PyPy, and others, that might support the whole language, a specific version, or a subset. But if you’re using Python, you’re probably running CPython. And it has something known as global interpreter lock that affects threaded code. In a nutshell, only one thread can run in the interpreter at a time. There are some ways around it, such as moving performance-critical sections to C or having multiple interpreters. However, most existing solutions come with considerable downsides. Continue reading “Python Ditches The GILs And Comes Ashore” →

Python Provides Classic Basic

October 8, 2021 by Al Williams 22 Comments

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s when you turned on a PC, more often than not, you’d get a Basic prompt. Most people would then load a game from a tape, but if you were inclined to program you could just start writing. [Richpl] wanted that same experience and thus PyBasic was born. Along with some other Github contributors, the system has grown quite a bit and would be a good start at porting classic games or creating a replica vintage computer.

The interpreter lacks specialized hardware-specific features such as sound and graphics, of course, but then again, you could add them. It does have file I/O and also includes some interesting features like an analog of C’s ternary operator.

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Awesome Python Video Tutorials Keep You Motivated

October 1, 2021 by Dave Rowntree 21 Comments

Programming languages are one of those topics that we geeks have some very strong and often rather polarised opinions about. As new concepts in computing are dreamt up, older languages may grow new features, if viable, or get left behind when new upstarts come along and shake things up a bit. This scribe can remember his early days programming embedded systems, and the arguments that ensued when someone came along with a project that required embedded C++ or worse, Java, when we were mostly diehard C programmers. Fast forward a decade or two, and things are way more complicated. So much choice, so much opinion.

So it’s really nice to come across some truly unique and beautifully made Python tutorial videos, that are engaging and fun to watch. Fronted by Canadian actress [Ulka Simone Mohanty] who some may recognise from such lofty titles as the game “Magic: The Gathering Arena” and various films and TV shows, she delivers a dead-pan avatar-like presentation of the most important areas of Python. We were particularly amused by the comment “Loopus Interruptus” as the exception condition iterating off the end of a list.

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BFree Brings Intermittent Computing To Python

September 29, 2021 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

Generally speaking, we like our computing devices to remain on and active the whole time we’re using them. But there are situations, such as off-grid devices that run on small solar cells, where constant power is by no means a guarantee. That’s where the concept of intermittent computing comes into play, and now thanks to the BFree project, you can develop Python software that persists even when the hardware goes black.

Implemented as a shield that attaches to a Adafruit Metro M0 Express running a modified CircuitPython interpreter, BFree automatically makes “checkpoints” as the user’s code is running so that if the power is unexpectedly cut, it can return the environment to a known-good state instantaneously. The snapshot of the system, including everything from the variables stored in memory to the state of each individual peripheral, is stored on the non-volatile FRAM of the MSP430 microcontroller on the BFree board; meaning even if the power doesn’t come back on for weeks or months, the software will be ready to leap back into action.

In addition to the storage for system checkpoints, the BFree board also includes energy harvesting circuity and connections for a solar panel and large capacitor. Notably, the system has no provision for a traditional battery. You can keep the Metro M0 Express plugged in while developing your code, but once you’re ready to test in the field, the shield is in charge of powering up the system whenever it’s built up enough of a charge.

The product of a collaboration between teams at Northwestern University and Delft University of Technology, BFree is actually an evolution of the battery-free handheld game they developed around this time last year. While that project was used to raise awareness of how intermittent computing works, BFree is clearly a more flexible platform, and is better suited for wider experimentation.

We’ve seen a fair number of devices that store up small amounts of energy over the long term for quick bouts of activity, so we’re very interested to see what the community can come up with when that sort of hardware is combined with software that can be paused until its needed.